46.

"Yum." Dora sniffed and the aromatic fragrance would have had her placing the entire piece into her mouth at once until she remembered how good coffee smelled and how bitter it tasted.

"Go an. Try."

Dora bit into the chocolate. As the sugary confection melted on her tongue, she squealed in delight. "Chocolate alone is almost worth giving up my immortality for"

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself."

"I didn't expect food to be this wonderful. I can hardly wait to make love.

In the middle of sucking fudge from her fingertip. Tessa stopped and sighed.

"Whoa. First of am humans usually ease into subjects like making love."

"Sorry." Dora tended to forget that human s.e.xuality was such a sensitive subject and wondered if she'd ever understand why even Tessa was so touchy about discussing it.

But then in her typical straight-ahead fashion. Tessa plunged into the subject anyway. "Eating and making love are two very different kinds of sensual experiences."

"Exactly. That's why, as soon as possible, I want to be with a man."

"Making love is emotional. If you want the experience be good, and I know you do, you need to slow down."

"Not everyone agrees that waiting is better."

Tessa's cheeks flushed with color. "I'm not talking about technique.'' When Tessa had first met Kahn, he'd needed to teach her to use her psi by inducing high levels of frustration. Kahn had used the s.e.xual kind. The two of them had battled and wed and eventuality fallen in love. Dora thought their tale romantic. Although she hadn't been privy to their lovemaking, she'd seen how s.e.xual intercourse had brought them closer together. Tessa might be uncomfortable with the subject, but she could also be blunt.

"I'm saying you've only been human a few hours. Give yourself time to establish a friendship first-"

"You and I are friends. We've been friends for years."

Tessa sighed over her coffee cup. Friendship between a women is different than between a woman and a man."

"Zical likes me." Dora had few secrets from Tessa and appreciated her take on men, even if she often didn't agree with her conclusions.

"Zical isn't accustomed to thinking of you as human."

"But once he sees me-"

"It still may take him a while to change. Rystani men are stubborn."

Dora's goal had always been to attract Zical's interest and she understood the need for long-term planning. Convincing him to notice her the way she wanted might take time. But her impatience mounted. She couldn't wait for him to see her.

47.

"You believe he'll reject this body?" Dora stood and with a psi thought made her gown transparent. She loved looking at her body and had kept her flesh covered long enough.

Tessa rolled her eyes at the ceiling. "Dora, when you created yourself, you forgot to include modesty."

"Fine." Dora reclothed herself and fought down her resentment. Just because Tessa was uptight about nudity didn't mean she had to be. She was an individual. Yet, she also needed to remember to have patience and consideration, traits that seemed more difficult now that she was in her body. "I'm sorry. I've waited so long to be human. I want to try everything. Do everything. Do you think Zical will mind if I kiss him when we meet?"

While she'd been eating, Dora had noted how incredibly sensitive her lips were.

And lips were a known erotic zone. To press them against Zical's... ok, that would be a fine sensation.

"Why don't you at least plan to have a conversation first, then you ask him if it's okay before you kiss him," Tessa suggested.

"If I ask, he may say no. As for the conversation... I don't know. Can't I just kiss him h.e.l.lo?"

"That is not Rystani custom. A bug would be more appropriate and you know it."

"Are you going to turn into my mother?" Dora asked with a twitch of her lip that she hadn't intended.

"Of course not." Tessa took her hand. "But I've been human all my life. I don't want to see you hurt. Or Zical hurt. Human relationships are trickier than they appear."

Dora could see that Tessa was fairly bursting to give her advice. "And?"

"And if I were your mother"-Tessa laughed, but her eyes were serious-"I'd tell you to start a conversation with Zical asking about his work."

"I've been there with him every moment. There's nothing he can tell me about the lack of progress on Mount Shachauri that I don't already know."

"Except his feelings."

"He's obviously frustrated. Won't s.e.x relax him?"

Tessa threw her hands into the air, clearly unhappy. But Dora's question was logical, wasn't it? She'd spent yeas studying humans, and yet she trusted Tessa's judgment. As a computer, Dora, made decisions based on her ethical program, her data stream, and her personality. Now that she was in a human body she didn't have the same ma.s.sive amount input, but the process to make a decision should have been the same.

Yet it wasn't.

Zical was the unknown factor and for her to consider all her possible actions to create the reaction she wanted seemed impossible. If she'd wanted only an o.r.g.a.s.m, not emotional connection, she could m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.e, but the idea of experiencing her initial

48.

s.e.xual pleasure with Zical was her first choice-but she had yet to figure out how to win his cooperation. Her eye twitched and her knee gave way. She stumbled and caught herself. She glanced at Tessa, to see if she'd noticed her mistake.

She had. And when she caught Dora glancing at her, she wiped the frown from her lips. "You've done too much. You should rest."

"Let's not start lying to each other." Dora locked gazes with her best friend.

"Okay?"

"Okay." Tessa didn't mince words. "You shouldn't be stumbling around. at least, I don't think so. Why don't we have a medical doctor-"

''Good idea." Dora tried not to let her lower lip quiver. She'd known there would be problems. She would deal with them. Her eyes burned and water trickled down her cheek fore her suit wiped away the moisture. Her nose became stuffy and her chest tightened. Even as she noted the un-comfortable physical reactions to her worry, she was realized that becoming human was more difficult than she'd antic.i.p.ated."

She'd wanted a perfect body so she could entice Zical. But her beautiful body wasn't in perfect working order. Her facial muscles twitched and spasmed, her joints gave out without warning.

Miserable because of what she perceived as her failure to adjust properly, she didn't bother to wipe away her tears. "I don't want Zical to see me like this."

Tessa embraced her. "Human babies crawl before they walk. You're trying to do everything at once and your doing marvellously well."

"Thanks." Dora sniffed, hating the clogged nostrils that made breathing through her month a necessity. I' m being a big baby"

"No, you're being human." Tessa hugged her hard, then stepped back. "You've done the impossible, Dora. You've gotten what you wanted."

Dora hoped Tessa was correct. Her lack of lack knowledge bothered her. Since she'd had no intention of becoming a doctor, she'd limited her medical wisdom to first aid. Once she could have consulted every medical text written about her uncontrollable spasms. She would have known which procedures were the likeliest ones to cure her, which doctor had the best rate of success, which hospital on which planet specialized in... Stars, she didn't even have a name for whatever was wrong with her.

She'd always known humans had to cope with illness and injuries and she'd admired the way so many people faced their infirmities with courage. Dora wished to do the same. She would not succ.u.mb to the fear that the doctors couldn't fix her before she'd even been diagnosed. When willing her trembling to cease failed, she used a psi thought to stop the quivers.

Taking back a measure of control gave her strength. "My lack of knowledge bothers me as much as, if not more than the muscle spasms."

Tessa spoke firmly. "Dora, you need to do what we do when we don't know something."

49.

"What?"

Tessa eyes brightened with amus.e.m.e.nt and a chuckle escaped. "Ask the computer."

Chapter Five.

Zical suspected Tessa knew that he'd been avoiding a private conversation with her about Dora for several weeks. Luckily, she couldn't possibly know about his Dora fantasies, which he continued to blame on the golden light. Somehow, Dora's telling him about her decision to transfer into a body just before the golden light had struck him had flooded his mind with erotic images of Dora that seemed to have taken a permanent residence in his brain. Unwilling to allow his fantasies about Dora to again merge with his visit to Zentos, he'd avoided both of them.

Besides, the notion of Dora as a woman intrigued him too much, and he couldn't trust himself around her just yet. He cared to much for her to have her glimpse his l.u.s.t and mistake it for more than the afftereffects of the golden light. Dora also didn't need to deal with Zical's confusing feelings over her transformation. He still thought of her as a computer, not a s.e.xy voice. She had to be feeling very vulnerable now that her transformation had gone awry, and the last thing he wanted to do was cast doubts about her humanity on top of her other problems. When the doctors couldn't find a reason for Dora's physical twitching and uncontrollable muscle spasms, she'd holed up and hidden herself from the few family gatherings he'd attended over the past two months.

Tessa had finally tracked him down in the gym where he and Kahn had been training. A Rystani woman wouldn't have interrupted men during combat exercise. But Tessa was from Earth and she was more skilled than most Rystani warriors in combat and very comfortable in this masculine environment. Normally, Zical would have welcomed her presence, but no man appreciated having an audience for his defeat. And Kahn had just thrown and pinned him.

While there was no shame in losing a bout to one of the foremost fighters in the Federation, Zical wondered if the two were teaming up on him Kahn's workout had him physically exhausted, and then Tessa came straight to the point, ignoring Zical's m.u.f.fled groan as he employed aching muscles and a weary psi to shove to his feet.

She shot a look as her husband as sharp as a laser. "Kahn tell him that if he cares about Dora, be should visit her."

"Tell him yourself." Kahn grinned lazily, his eyes full of affection and amus.e.m.e.nt.

Zical turned to leave, careful to keep his tone casual, as if he had nothing to hide.

Although he considered Dora a friend, he didn't feel close enough to her to intrude on her privacy. "I have to get back to Mount Shachauri."

He'd spoken no more than the truth. While he'd been saddled with the ch.o.r.e of ferrying engineers and scientists into the mountain, he'd put off making any career

51.

choices. But he wasn't complaining. As much as he missed piloting has starship, his crew was taking a. well-deserved vacation, and besides, the alien machinery fascinated him. He also enjoyed listening to the scientists speculate about the find. But if he were honest, although he was avoiding Dora, he did yearn to see her, curious to know -what she looked like. His contradictory thoughts didn't make sense to him, so he certainly didn't warn to attempt to explain them to Tessa.

But she had that don't-mess-with-me gleam in her eyes that told Zical he wouldn't easily escape. In one easy move she blocked his exit. "Oh, no you don't."

Zical glanced at Kahn but be shrugged, signaling be wasn't about to step into the middle of this discussion. Zical was on his own. He tried to keep a sheepish expression from giving him away. "I'm not avoiding her. I've attended family gatherings and she's beer hiding in her room."

"Really?"

Tessa might be slender and short, but she could put more authority into one word than any woman he'd ever met. Right now he had to remind himself they were in tee same family, that she was Dora's friend, and that she wasn't about to let him go until she'd had her say.

Tessa eyed him and softened her tone. "The doctors can't find anything wrong with her physically. She refuses to speak with a shrink. I can't reach her, and instead of enjoying her new body, she's cooped up in her quarters and spending to much time with the computer."

"So?''

"I think you can help her. She's always had a special affection for you."

"Affection? She's a computer" Zical played dumb. Dora had always been much more than a computer, but defining her was impossible, although, "sa.s.sy, smart, and seductive" popped into his mind. "When Dora bad been a computer, her affectionate nature and her teasing s.e.xual innuendos had amused him. But now that she was altered, he wasn't sure he was ready for her transformation from his s.e.xy computer friend to a genuine woman. And now that the golden light had filled his nights with restless erotic dreams where Dora's provocative whispers took center stage, he wasn't certain he trusted himself to handle a new relationship. He especially didn't want to cause Dora more damage.

"She wasn't born human. But I a.s.sure you that she's one hundred percent human now. Or she was... but she's spending too much time plugged into the network."

"Plugged in?"